The attempt on the life of Yehuda Glick by a Palestinian assailant who was identified within a few hours as Mu’tazz Hijazi and executed by police who surrounded his house in East Jerusalem has unleashed a filthy wave of Jewish racism. “This crosses all the red lines” is standard response of the leaders of the government in Israel, along with the usual cries of “Death to Arabs!” The radio and television have given free air time to representatives of the extreme Right, who have taken full advantage of this to propagate their racist doctrines.

Yehuda Glick is a prominent activist in the messianic religious Right, the goal of which is to take control over as much Palestinian territory and property as possible and to shove the Arabs aside. His activism focuses on prayer by Jews in the mosque compound in the area where the Jewish Temple once stood, according to Jewish religious belief. I am not an archaeologist, and so I do not know if the Temple – “the holiest place for the Jewish People” as the religious put it – actually stood on that spot. Even archaeologists disagree among themselves about the precise location of the Temple. But since people believe it, the facts are irrelevant.

Glick and his comrades want to break the status quo that has prevailed since the Occupation began in June 1967. Back then the Mufti of Jerusalem was promised that Israel would respect Palestinian autonomy in the management of the Islamic holy places. Part of the understanding between the sides was that Jews would not go to the mosque compound for purposes of prayer, so as not to arouse suspicion among the Palestinians that the Jews were beginning a process of taking control over the Islamic holy place. Glick is running his campaign under the liberal slogan of freedom of religion for all. No civilized person could object to that, as long as both parties are equal. But as long as the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is one of occupier and occupied, we should stick to the arrangement that was made back then between Defence Minister Moshe Dayan and the Muslim leadership in Jerusalem.

The settlers have not concealed their objective of removing the “abominations” (that’s what the settlers call the mosques) from the Temple Mount and rebuilding the Temple. Hijazi, a 34-year-old bachelor, sat in an Israeli prison for 11 years. He entered as a Fatah activist and left as a Jihad member (an Israeli contribution to Muslim fundamentalism). He looked on helplessly as Jews took over Palestinian assets through all kinds of shady dealings in the context of a master plan for the Judaization of the east of the city. He took the settlers’ plan seriously and decided to do something. That is how religious zealots from both sides of the barricades meet, and a conflict that should be a national one becomes a religious war, and ISIS becomes a stopover on the route to Hell. Temple Mount zealots are willing to risk war with a billion Muslims. They are willing to sacrifice a million Jews for the sake of Jewish control over the Temple Mount. The result of such a war will be the decline and disappearance of Israel.

Did Glick’s assailant “cross all the red lines”? Let us see! If assassination reflects a change in the policy of the Jihad and Hamas, that is, instead of sowing death indiscriminately in buses and cafés using suicide-bombers, they have adopted the Occupation army’s tactic of targeted assassinations, [1] then this good news of a sort, for those who use public transit and frequent cafés.Whoever applauds every extrajudicial execution carried out by the Occupation army as part of the “targeted assassinations” programme loses the right to object when others adopt the same tactic. But those who protest against the Israeli policy of executing people in general and without trial in particular have earned the right to say the same thing to the other side. If you believe that someone is a war-criminal, file a complaint at the International Criminal Court and ask every state whose laws include a universal jurisdiction clause to put war-criminals on trial to issue an arrest warrant. That is my opinion and my suggestion.

In Palestinian Jerusalem, the east of the city as the Jewish public calls it, a popular uprising against the Occupation regime on the municipal and national level has been taking place for several months now. Its heroes are children and youths armed with stones, like David back in the day. Having thrown stones myself at British vehicles as a child under the British regime, I feel solidarity with the Palestinians. As a child it was clear to me that I must not throw stones at civilian vehicles, for I did not know who was travelling in them and innocents might be harmed. So I concentrated on British military or police vehicles that could be easily identified.

The Jewish mayor (who was not elected by the Palestinians) and the Jewish prime minister and the Jewish police minister are competing with each other over who can propose the most far-reaching measures to suppress the uprising. There is a lot of talk about incitement of youth, but there is no need for incitement. Every day they live hardship, neglect and discrimination at the hands of the regime. They know very well who the enemy is. The leaders of the Occupation regime have decided to impose on East Jerusalem the methods of oppression used in the Occupied Territories, even though East Jerusalem has been annexed to Israel. So it was decided to impose fines on the parents of children who throw stones. This suits the Jihad and Hamas just fine. The fines will only enhance the hostility towards the Occupation regime and at the same time they will increase their popularity, because they will reimburse the parents the sums they pay in fines.

Why does Israel insist on keeping East Jerusalem? Parts of it are reminiscent of the Third World. It is a neglected area that is discriminated against and receives little investment. No effort is made to treat it as if it were part of the capital city of Israel. Just a headache. The answer is implicit in the policy of “Transfer”. In secret meetings hidden from the eyes of the public, without detailed protocols, the ethnic purification is being planned and the big opportunity is being awaited. Jerusalem without Arabs – that is the prevailing sweet Zionist dream.

How ludicrous, given this reality, is that “Holiday” called “Jerusalem Unification Day”. It is a holiday worthy of dictatorial regimes that invent holidays in honour of the tyrant, and impose them on the population, which is commanded to rejoice. This “holiday” is characterized by a provocative procession by violent settlers through Palestinian neighbourhoods. They represent the dark side of the Occupation; a culture of burning mosques and houses along with their inhabitants; instead of uprooting mountains through their study of the Torah, they uproot Palestinian olive trees as part of the routine programme of terrorizing the Palestinians, plundering their property, and worst of all, the murder or wounding of Palestinians, which often leads to files being closed in sloppy cases on a pretext like the shooter could not be found or there was no public interest. The poisoned fruit of this culture has been flowing from the Occupied Territories to within the Green Line, and found expression in the murder or Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the anniversary of whose assassination we will be commemorating soon (4 November).

In June 1983, over 30 years ago, I wrote a short column that was published in Maariv, about Jerusalem Unification Day. Among other things, I wrote: “Jerusalem Unification Day is part of the contamination of Israeli society as well as the distortion of the Hebrew language.” That’s how it was and that’s how it is.

The government of Israel and the Jerusalem municipality have proved that they are unable to digest Palestinian Jerusalem and to provide it with services at the level of those received by the city’s Jews. Palestinian Jerusalem must be taken off Israel’s hands and transferred to a United Nations administration until the signing of a permanent agreement about its status.

And the apartheid? How’s it doing? It’s doing splendidly, thanks very much. It’s flourishing in the Occupied Territories. Our tender yeshiva boys and ulpana girls, who use the best perfumes, cannot stand the smell that wafts off the Arabs in the buses, so they asked the defence minister to separate the two groups in public transportation by assigning the Arabs to separate buses. And the minister agreed – for “security reasons”, of course. Now the children of the Chosen People can travel on public transportation without Arabs sweating after a day of exhausting work. The way it used to be in good old America – the slaves there and the masters here – that is the World Order planned for us by the Good Lord who is so beneficent to His Chosen People.

Translator’s note

1. The term used in Hebrew literally means “focused foiling” or “focused thwarting” (sikul memuqad). It is generally understood that “foiling” or “thwarting” is a euphemism for killing a person before he or she has a chance to carry out an attack.